I know that we have spent a long time dedicating space in Vinagre Asesino - perhaps too much - to the soap opera that is being developed between Google and AEDE, but it is that the situation is totally and absolutely delusional. They not only got that Google News shut down -in the first thing in the morning the disappearance of the aggregator was already effective-, but later protested a closure that they themselves had caused.
Now not only is the tone of madness that surrounds this situation maintained, but it is acquiring increasingly bizarre tones. After having protested as we said before, now the director of AEDE, José Gabriel González - whose knowledge of SEO must be enormous and must see things that most of us do not see - says that he is convinced that the closure of Google News will not affect the AEDE media at all.
According to González, Google would not have wanted to sit down and negotiate rates with the different AEDE associates regarding the collection of a fee:
We are surprised that now that a period of negotiation of the rates was opening they have not sat down to talk with us and close the Google News platform.
As we have already commented on other occasions, AEDE includes some of the best-known newspapers in the country, nationally and regionally, and even audiovisual groups such as Atresmedia. And as is logical to think, the exclusively digital media in its entirety have been against this measure. And with respect to the protest that the authorities have raised about the closure of the aggregator, they continue to show they have not understood anything with statements like this:
It is a business decision that we respect because Google is sovereign in deciding what to do with your company. However, we are surprised by the closure.
And what did they expect? The fundamental issue, as we have already said in other articles on this blog, is that Google News does not generate money as it is an ad-free website. But nevertheless, González insists that Google profited at his expense:
It is a great company with which we have reached several agreements, but there are things we do not agree with. One of them is that precisely that they catch news from us and that with that make an aggregator, because although they say they do not have a direct profit, they do have it indirectly.
The first to close the door were AEDE and not Google
If there is someone who has shown that they are not interested in a negotiation between both parties it was not Google, but AEDE. They have wanted the collection of a fee to be an "inalienable right" due to, according to them, an alleged "inequality between the negotiating parties." González says that if they had not insisted on that point, the same thing would have happened as in Germany and Google could have impose your conditions above those of the editors.
Not content with criminalizing and little less than accusing the company of the seeker of being an Axis of Evil itself, the director of AEDE has said that «the drop in audience will not be noticeable«, As we already said at the beginning of the article. Why are you so sure? You can see for yourself:
At first, yes, there will be a fall but later it will recover and we will have more visits because users will access the media directly.
It is difficult to share this point of view when from minute zero Google News was generating a large percentage of the traffic of AEDE associates, not to mention that alternative publications all over the Internet were benefiting. The fall that González talks about probably won't recover, with which they would have to reverse an express law driven by thinking that Google was robbing them.
This is the thinking that has been held in traditional media on the Internet since the Napster scandal broke out in 1999. It's been fifteen years since that, and nobody has understood absolutely nothing. And it is easier to criminalize what is difficult to understand than, directly, to try to learn a little about the platform that is treated as an enemy.
The soap opera promises to lengthen for a few more chapters, and if AEDE ends up backing down, we'll try to be the first to tell you. Meanwhile, the Internet in Spain continues to live in a time of nonsense, and it is not understandable that once you have done everything possible to enter the Network of Networks, do everything in your power to get out of it.
Source: Sputnik News